Psychology to Pursue Safer Roads

Driver’s education is absolutely necessary, especially in a country where vehicular accidents are so prevalent. I can say that the worst I’ve experienced is hitting my side mirror on the edge of the garage, but many people my age are not so lucky. In my high school alone I’ve heard of three accounts of serious accidents. This is just one high school, in one district of one city in America. The numbers are staggering, but there are solutions. Education and positive reinforcement are the two key components of a future with safer roads. This may seem counterintuitive to current methods of irresponsible driving punishments, yet through this essay it will be revealed how positive reinforcement is more effective than any other method.

I have never been in a car accident, though I’ve always had severe anxiety about such a situation. During the lessons for my driver’s permit, I learned two facts that made me almost too terrified to get behind the wheel. One, the precise details of what happens to the human body when hit by a car or train. I will never forget the interview given by a train conductor about trying to stop the train in time, but failing. The horrors I heard made me grateful that I live nowhere near train tracks. Two, a simple statistic: you are more likely to get in an accident within a radius of five miles around your home. One night, I babysat my four siblings while my parents went on a date at the bar nearby our house. They were an hour later than I expected, long enough for my mind to leap to the worst case scenario. As the oldest child I have known since I was ten years old that I would be responsible for everything if my parents were gone. Our nuclear family lives isolated from our extended family. Without my parents, we would be isolated, adrift without aid. I knew the consequences of irresponsible driving without my parents ever having a D.U.I. on record. Obviously my parents came home. I did not have to become an emancipated adult and I did not have to give up my education or my future to take care of my siblings. Yet the hypotheticals remain engraved in my mind. Safe driving is important, if only for the other lives you impact.

Eventually I moved past my fear of driving (aided by the fact that I needed glasses and didn’t realize until halfway through my permit practice driving). With my license in hand, our insurance company required that my family download an app that tracks our phone usage while on the road. Based on our lack of phone use, we would then be given a discount on our insurance rate. Like golf. The lower the score, the higher the discount. This has been highly effective for our family, and I would highly recommend it be implemented for other new drivers as well. Not only new drivers, but all drivers. The simple challenge-compensation system of this app rewards specific behavior with monetary rewards. Other methods have their merit, however, positive reinforcement is proven to be more effective than negative punishment.

These ideas are simple concepts conveyed in psychology. In psychological terms, positive and negative do not refer to what you might think, i.e. good and bad. Positive, in this case, means “to add” while negative means “to remove”. When aiming for a specific behavior in people–in this case, safe driving practices–one can use positive or negative reinforcement. One can add benefits, such as the policy discount my family receives. Or one can remove benefits, such as license restrictions that are the more commonplace approach. In the words of Behavior Modification by Hannah K. Scott, Ankit Jain, and Mark Cogburn, “Positive reinforcement works exceedingly better and faster than punishment.” (Scott, Jain, Cogburn, 2023). These methods are most commonly employed as parenting techniques, but evidence suggests they would be equally effective when employed as behavior incentives in teenagers and adults. For my own personal life, I keep in mind a specific philosophy: The only thing I cannot control in life is myself. I cannot control what others do, but I can control how I react. I can choose to put my phone in my bag, then put my bag in the back seat. I can avoid driving while tired, and as I move further in life I will never drive under the influence. Personal philosophy, external incentives, and education should all be coupled together in order to persuade the upcoming generations on the importance of road safety.

Works Cited:

Hannah K. Scott, Ankit Jain, and Mark Cogburn. 2023. Behavior Modification. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29083709/